As mobile devices such as Smartphones become commonplace, they are increasingly equipped with technologies that allow them to perform a wide variety of functions. Such functions include purchase transactions in which customers utilize their mobile devices to facilitate payment for items at the point of sale. One approach utilizes Smartphones equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) to enable customers to pay merchants without requiring the presentation of to conventional physical payment card such as a credit card. Having previously provided credit card information to his Smartphone, the customer pays the merchant by tapping or waving the phone closely over an NFC reader provided by the merchant.
The NFC approach described above has limitations, however. For one thing, the NFC reader is only able to obtain information from the phone if it is positioned in very close proximity, that is, within a few centimeters of the reader. As such, payment by NFC typically requires the customer to consciously perform a physical action to bring the phone sufficiently close to the reader, such as by tapping or waving the phone as described above.
Furthermore, although the NFC approach allows the customer to provide information to the merchant via the reader, no means are typically available for the merchant to provide information directly to the customer phone. As such, the customer has no way to ensure that his information will be associated with the present transaction unless he presents his credit card to the merchant or taps or waves a phone over the reader, as described above. Thus, there is a need for a mobile device based purchase approach that overcomes these limitations.